Third Room: films by JEAN GENET and ED RUSCHA
selected by Andreas Reiter Raabe
Opening: 11. September 2007, 7 - 9 pm
Duration of the exhibition: September 12 - October 27, 2007
ED RUSCHA
born in Nebraska, US in 1937, lives and works in Los Angeles. Numerous exhibits: United States representative at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, Jeu de Paume Paris, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, Whitney Museum New York, Museum of Modern Art New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, National Gallery of Art Washington, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, MOCA Los Angeles, Museum Ludwig Köln.
Ed Ruscha focuses on the narrative possibilities of film: Both of his diverting films are about wonderful and alluring cars, women and cookies. Premium, USA 1969/70, 16 mm, 24', R: Ed Ruscha based on the photo book Crackers published in 1969. Subtitle: "How to Derive the Maximum Enjoyment from Crackers". A film featuring Larry Bell, Leon Bing, Rudi Gernreich and Tommy Smothers. Miracle, USA 1975, 16 mm, 28'44'', R: Ed Ruscha „…the attitude comes out of a style of living and the taste of things… filtering the taste with the style of living and then coming up with statements. Like, Miracle is a product of everything I do, everything I think about, everything I buy… All that staff goes into the funnel and comes out, la da!" (quotation from an interview with Ed Ruscha about the film Miracle)
JEAN GENET
Paris 1910 - 1986. Genet wrote novels, plays, poems, and essays, including The Thief's Journal, Our Lady of the Flowers, The Balcony, The Blacks and The Maids. Christine König Galerie shows his only film Un Chant d'Amour for the first time in Austria.
Un Chant d'Amour is Jean Genet's only film, which he directed in 1950. Because of its explicit homosexual content, the 26-minute movie was long banned and was also disowned by Genet later in his life. The plot is set in a French prison, where a prison guard takes voyeuristic pleasure in observing the prisoners perform masturbatory sexual acts. Genet does not use sound in his film, forcing the viewer to completely focus on closeups of faces, armpits, and semi-erect penises. The film's highly sexualized atmosphere has been recognized as a formative factor for works such as the films of Andy Warhol. |
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